The importance of creativity Is vital for any campaign to be successful. However, with this digital age well and truly upon us the Marketing industry has felt the effects. As P and G Brand officer states; digital marketing is over. Somewhat abrupt but he has a point. Marketing is losing its appeal and is based on brand building, and great creative campaigns are being lost. Therefore the IMC concept of power of ideas is being lost. He states that we need to strip away all the technology and the fluff and focus on creating a creative engaging campaign first, then finally use digital media as a tool and not a must or necessity. This way great campaign will emerge and enable brand building.

The words of P&G brand Officer make me think about the importance we gave to digital marketing in the last years. It was definitely a hype and everyone was astonished by the new possibilities but forgot about the key factor of every marketing campaign: the creative idea. Using digital marketing was too long the main goal of a campaign. As Mr Pritchard points out – and I agree with him – digital marketing may not longer be the core of the campaign. Instead it should be seen as a tool that helps you deliver your message and get consumer engaged within your campaign that utilizesall kinds of media.

Jasmine, I agree. Great campaigns are ones which are creative or equally engaging. Though electronics positively (when used right) influences advertisements. creative campaigns are more successful than ones with the highest range of technical adaption.

In part one of a two-part series, creative professionals forecast how tech and social changes will impact marketing and how they are going to up their creative game in 2013.

Jasmin Vallance's insight:

This article allows members from the marketing industry to collectively think what trends will change marketing in 2013. For any marketing campaigns there must be an air of creativity whilst looking for results. These opinions that have been given allow us to gather an insight into the workings of marketing and the communication mix. As the internet and mobile devices become more recognised as a marketing tool, creative marketers and strategist have to “up their game” to ensure that they are able to properly create a brand that is successful. This article is set out in two parts’ the first is the creative marketer’s opinions and responses and part two is opinions and responses from the strategist. Both these make a communication mix. I like what Neil Heymann, group creative director at Droga5 New York has to say about the communication mix and how to evolve marketing to reach a greater audience “It’s becoming increasingly challenging to get people to pay attention to and care about your message. This year, we need to make the most of these advances to really connect with our audiences in a manner that’s unique and relevant”. Marketing is finding it harder to capture people’s attention therefore, there is a greater need for communication mix.

It appears to me that most of the interviewees see big trends in mobile and digital marketing. Personally I agree with Jason Gaboriau that the big technology wave is over. Smartphones and tablets will still improve but they won’t change radically anymore. Thus I think that there is still much to learn about how to use the new technologies and media and the next year will give marketers the time to do so because they don’t have to adopt new technologies as they had before. Now is the time to learn what scientists and designers developed over the last years and how to utilize it and engage customers. I think we will see campaigns combining mobile technologies and apps with traditional advertising. Nevertheless it is important to always pay attention to new trends and see new technologies coming.

Think about it this way: It used to be you’d have a crisis communication plan written and it would stay in a drawer until your PR team pulled it out the following year, dusted it off, and gave it a good rewrite.

I’m sure you see or hear this a lot: Traditional PR is dead! Media relations is dead! Websites are dead! Marketing is dead! Advertising is dead! Newspapers are dead!

Granted, sometimes those things are written to motivate people to click on a link, but all of the customary ways of communication are far from dead. Instead, we find it’s necessary to integrate the things that are “dead” with digital public relations....

This article highlights the issue faced by many marketing and PR firms. This article I found was to be very relevant to the week 3 topic organizing for IMC; Marketing communicating partnerships. This article states that once the world enter a post 9/11 state, jobs were all of a sudden at a shortage and budgets were cut. Many different companies had to integrate together forming partnerships of marketers and PR people. The article looks deeper into how the relevance of social media has changed and shaped the way in which marketing and PR are controlled. People are able to pick up their mobile phones and instantly they are able to cause a PR crisis for companies. However, the traditional ways of media should be kept and not put aside for twitter, blogs and other social media networks

The article suggests that integration is essential in today climate because communication between departments within a company can lead to better results regarding a marketing campaign and individual silos should be a thing of the past.

Mobile & PC users both consume the same information. Both do similar things such as browsing the web, playing games, listening to music, watching video, sending emails and accessing social media. However, mobile owners also download applications, send SMS and importantly personalize their phone with ringtones, wallpapers, and exterior cases.

But, today mobile devices serve as primary communication channel. With 3G mobile data networks quickly becoming reliable and affordable, we see a big shift in the way users consume information on their handhelds. Delivery over-the-air, directly to the mobile device, is now the most common form of information delivery. As a result of this more & more businesses take to mobile first and mobile only strategy. However, the biggest question for these businesses is hot to channelize their resources efficiently to tap this growing segment. It is clear that marketing and reaching out to the customer require much more than just a sexy app.

Device Penetration and User Demographics

Generally the younger consumers around the globe use more smart phone devices. However, in the countries like BRIC nations, where the network infrastructure required for smart phones is still taking the shape, feature phone & multimedia phones continue to hold strong.

In addition to this, the users in the countries like USA, UK, and Korea like to consume the information with unlimited data plans provided by the mobile service providers whereas in emerging nations less expensive & flexible data plans like pay as you go are more trending.

Mobile Video

While mobile video viewing is not going to replace the traditional television viewing, 28 % of Indian smart phone users acknowledge that they watch less traditional television as compared to mobile viewing.

Mobile video consumption rose more than 10 percent during Q4 2012, according to Adobe’s U.S. Digital Video Benchmark study released earlier this year.

This trend also emerges with the fact that mobile viewing engages the user to view video anytime, anywhere. Also, with the surge in tablet market the video consumption pattern is quickly changing. However, the consumption of information on mobile phones happens via mobile web browsers & apps as downloading the video clips isn’t the preferred choice of the users.

Mobile Buying Decision

While consumers are adopting smart phones around the world, yet their criteria to choose the device to buy vary with country. Consumers in USA, UK, Italy seeks for good value for money & consumers in Russia look for stylish design. Consumers in China care for a wide choice of applications to use on their device.

e Reading

In an increasingly digital environment, readers are gradually preferring the screen-based reading behavior.

This preference is also obvious because, in a giant web of connected content, every page is linked to another page. However, screen-based reading does cause strain on small real estate and small font size but it is compensated with the occasional reading. E-reading behavior is slowly catching up to print reading. E-reading provides the consumers an opportunity to connect to their favorite content anywhere, anytime. Users in China, USA, UK, Turkey, and UAE are more likely to buy a digital content than physical.

However, in countries like India users prefer apps related to games (39 %), social networking (29%) & video/ movies (29%) as compared to e-reading (11%).

Mobile Commerce

Mobile users carry their mobiles everywhere they go. Most of the users in US & UK use their phones to search online coupons, research products and compare the products available on store.

Users from South Korea, China, Australia & USA lead the mobile banking.

Mobile-banking

With more and more smart phone features like NFC and Passbooks, users are slowly embracing the mobile shopping. However, use of NFC and location based coupons are still nascent. With 20 % of users in China & 15 % in South Korea lead over USA & UK with merely 4% & 3% users respectively who prefer the use of NFC & Mobile wallet.

With number of Wi-Fi hotspots growing steadily, nearly two out of three shoppers in US use at least one device to research and purchase while shopping, and 28% use two devices at a time. More than one third of shoppers made at least one purchase with their mobile devices during the past six months. Tablet owners tend to make a purchase on the device with one in four having purchased six times or more in the past six months. When these numbers are compared to India, it is almost negligible because the network infrastructure is inadequate as compared to US.

Mobile Site

The relationship between the Mobile site & M- commerce is really closely knitted. Most of the shoppers prefer to access a store via its URL in a browser than by using a native app. This number is quite high for android users as compared to any other smart phone user. However, iPhone users stand out to use native apps as likely through mobile browser for their mobile shopping experience. That is why it is inevitable to provide a fine tuned mobile site shopping.

And with mobile, it’s now feasible to track an individual from the very first intention to shop for an item, to the actual purchase at point-of-sale.

Mobile Marketing & Advertising

Content providers across globe are trying to get new ways to reach the right audience. In all countries except India, smart phone owners are most likely to receive mobile ads about once a day. Indian smart phone owners receive mobile ads less frequently, with 70 percent seeing them about once a week or less.

It is very important not to forget that what users can do with their mobile. Let’s not forgo the legacy of SMS, MMS. A hard analysis is required to decide on which features a business should focus to market its products and services to the mobile consumers. It is important to determine whether the mobile will trigger awareness, consideration, evaluation, purchase or loyalty. (Based on the marketing funnel or McKinsey Loyalty Loop).

MLP

Advertiser must choose an appropriate mobile channel for their business to get the best value from the mobile consumers. It is evident from the table above that a marketer must scan the market first and decide upon the methodology for promoting its business based on the user interaction.

A study by A C Neilson suggests that smart phone owners in India and Turkey are the least likely to receive or see any ads on their device. With the exception of the U.S., in developed markets, smart phone owners are most likely to receive mobile ads via apps. Russian smart phone owners are the most likely to use their phone for texting (95%), so text messages are the most common method for receiving mobile ads. Chinese smart phone owners say they receive the most mobile ads, topping all countries in ads received via online games, mobile video/TV, streaming radio and location-based services.

Mobile Consumer Behavior- Future Story

New software & hardware innovation meeting together has changed the way we communicate. In future they will only change the way we interact with our surroundings. The applications like augmented reality and assistants like Siri & Google Voice have changed the mobile phones into experts with so much information at a tap of a finger. Consuming information will become a two way process where mobile phones will gather information to provide personalize information to its users.

With the recent surge in the tablet market as well, the future is looking bright for the consumers of both the developed & emerging nations.

This article looks at how consumer behaviour has changed towards the usuage of the moblie phone. The moblie phone was once a novelty and the size of a brick. Now in this day and age the moblie phone has changed due to consumer behaviour and communication. The average smart moblie phone is able to have access to internet, you are able to watch your favorite television shows and bank whilst on the go. When looking at consumer behaviour, we see that it is prompted by several different influences. These being, culture, subculture and social class. Therefore these influences have a large affect on how people use their mobile phones, they are now not just meant to call and txt you're friends but to connect to the wider world with the touch of your finger. The moblie phone has allowed marketers to reach a whole new level of consumers than ever imagined

This is really a very informative article. It outlines the most important channels to engage with Smartphone users, gives relevant figures and shows some trends in the mobile marketing field. It makes clear that mobile marketing will be most important in the future. But marketers may never forget that there are always parts of their target group that don’t own smart phones. H&M did a interesting campaign where consumers had to upload pictures to Instagram of themselves with a statues of David Beckham which were put into place at their stores. By doing so they were in to win prizes. I think to combine onsite and mobile advertising can create a whole new brand experience and is one of the futures trends in mobile advertising.

i agree with your opinion, i think this article was informative and current with today's market and social/ digital media segment. It outlines the important channels of communication and gives a clear indication that mobile marketing is the way forward in the future

For most brands, recognition is everything. Occasionally you'll encounter a company that seeks to create a air of exclusivity by shunning popular appeal, but (Not gonna lie, I like the enlarged logos & cropping on these pop cans.

Whilst reading through this article, it seemed to gel well with the Integrated Marketing Communication idea of; brands, brand management and brand architecture. This article explores the idea of brand recognition and how it influences consumer behaviour. Consumers have a natural gravitational pull towards a product. Therefore this allows brands to create a brand architecture " a formal process and outcome by which management rationalizes the firm's brands and makes explicit how brand names at each level in the organization will be applied" . This article shows that without brand image and brand recognition a brand may not be successful, consumers are going to go with a preferred brand that they know and trust rather than a new and upcoming brand or a brand which has been previously tarnished

This article is about brand recognition and the importance of it to companies that rely on the brand image and message to make consumers purchase their products. Stating that brand recognition is important for companies that rely on impulse buying such as purchasing a coke.

Stretching the limits on brand recognition by changing the packaging slightly will determine the relationship of the the brands image to the customers recognition of it. I believe this will measure the level of brand equity of a company.

What did you get out of reading this article? what brands were you able to recognise in this article? Is reducing the branding effective in terms of brand recognition?

Matthias Röse's comment,August 22, 2013 5:10 PM

As the article states packaging is a very important part of branding. Especially smaller and regularly bought items have to be seen fast by the consumer because he doesn’t want to spend a long time searching, he just wants to buy it as fast as possible. When it comes to more expensive products like MP3 player for example consumers usually don’t decide by the packaging. In this case packaging is more important to support the company’s image. Apples IPods for example come as all Apple products in a high quality, classy package. Opening those packages is kind of a brand experience and consumers will remember it. So there are different goals that can be achieved by the packaging of a product, but both are important to brands that use is effectively.

Direct mail marketing. Is it alive or not? This article provides a fascinating insight into how direct mail marketing aka flyers in your letter box compared to direct email marketing. From my own personal experience I find that any form of marketing which comes through my email I put it into the junk mail folder or delete straight away without a thought of it. However, with direct mail marketing you have to physically pick it up and move it to your rubbish bin, whilst doing so you tend to read over anything before you throw it away for good. Therefore I agree with this article that mail marketing is still very important and the statistics provided show this need for marketing. The statistics show that customer’s preference for information via the letter box is in health care and charities rather than email as it can seem to be more trustworthy, with 42% of people preferring mail over 11% email. Where marketing is concerned it is important to think of direct mail marketing when planning or strategies any campaign.

A lot of very interesting data is displayed in this graphic and it was fun studying it. Beforehand, when reading the article, I was very surprised by the fact that direct mail is on the rise again. I thought that with Emails being cheaper, faster and the easiness of tracking its effects but I learned otherwise. Yesterday I read an article giving best practice examples of direct mailing which is very interesting and I recommend to everyone thinking about a direct mailing campaign because the examples are quite inspiring (http://designshack.net/articles/business-articles/12-brilliant-direct-marketing-pieces-you-have-to-see/). I look forward to 2014 and I’ll definitely check whether the predictions about rising spending on direct mailing come true. I think that it is very important to know whether your business is in a branch where consumer prefer direct mail due to its seriousness.

One important tool that companies use when participating in direct marketing is direct mail. Direct mail is an old school approach that has been around for centuries to engage with customers, despite rumours of it dying its actually on the rise. The reason why direct mail has not died and has remained in favour within companies is the power it wields. In this article it states that on average 6.5 out 10 people either purchase or engage with the business that have received their mail. This article reinforces the fact that direct old school mail should not be completely over looked at over technological advances like smartphone apps and direct mail marketing equals direct profit.

Successful marketing consists of many facets, and has seen the integration of media campaigns into social media as a channel. This article states all the reasons as to why social media isn’t just a fad and is set here to stay. Therefore it is up to the marketing team to understand social media as a channel to use. This article shows rather important facts about the interaction between marketing and social media. 46% of customers count on social media when making a purchase. A good example of this is the new IOS7 upgrade being launched. I found myself checking social media and seeing what people thought about it before I upgraded. Therefore with a well thought out and managed plan social media can be used as a channel when it comes to creating a media campaign.

The above video is a bit of breathless hyperbole, and most likely you are aware of the impact of social media on your marketing plans for 2014. But if you needed to demonstrate the impact of social media to anyone, use this video.

As the author points out the social media made a big step forward within the last 5 years. While they were just for entertainment purpose in the first place they became profitable companies and big players worldwide. Now they can be seen as companies selling their knowledge about their audience to marketers who can use it to reach their target audience. The professionalization of the new media became a driving factor for marketers. The article gives a good overview about what technologies are used and what consumers share online. Sharing of experiences and knowledge about services and products is in my opinion the most important development and companies have to be aware of what users share about their newest products.

B2B marketing in 2013 SUMMARY: It's a good bet that digital marketing will become even more popular in 2013, Uri Bar-Joseph of Optify writes. Additionally, new techniques will emerge for evaluating campaigns, and solutions for dealing with "big data" will be introduced and adopted.

Jasmin Vallance's insight:

Looking at this article, it may not be 100% up-to-date as we are heading towards the end of the year, however, I think that this article highlights some important parts to do with strategy and creative media channels. Digital marketing is an important tool to have under your belt whilst in the marketing industry. This article looks at how integrated marketing will become a huge part of the marketing industry. “Marketers will try to combine tactics to make use of the compounded effect of multiple channels' working in unison. The market will react as more solutions will come to offer the ability to manage and measure integrated campaigns in one place, marking a decline in the adoption of one-dimensional solutions”. This article also looks at the theme of week 8 with direct mail marketing. It is seen to become very popular and in different articles they discuss the successful nature of direct mail marketing and the resorting back to this type of marketing as a channel. Direct mail marketing has its pro’s and con’s ; thus being PRO: high selectivity, the reader is able to control exposure, there’s a high information content and there are various repeat exposure opportunities. With every pro there comes con: people treat it as junk mail and there could be a higher cost. Overall this article does forecast many different options which we have seen come into place in IMC this year so far.

The trends mentioned here can be read in several articles. Most important to me is that the author points out that integrated marketing will gain popularity. I think with more channels available and the complex knowledge that is crucial to use the new media effectively makes it important to oversee all activities that a company does towards the consumers. The trends of soaring budgets, increasing importance of marketing to the top management and the shift of sales responsibility towards the marketing department make the process of integrating marketing communications more and more important. This is what became clear to me while reading this great article.

This article allows the reader to fully understand the basic concepts of establishing objectives and budgeting for the promotional programs. This article relates well with the IMC concept as, it allows us to understand these ideas. These objectives are key ingredients for any business looking to use marketing as a successful tool. The article breaks down the objectives, through looking at the values in which objectives have; communications, planning and decision making, measurement and evaluation of results. Any marketing objectives need to be realistic and measurable for a business to be successful.

The establishment of objectives and budgets are key to effective Integrated Marketing Communications. This article discusses important points for both and introduces the new concept of DAGMAR - Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results.

Matthias Röse's comment,August 22, 2013 5:08 PM

This article opens the door to the wide field of Integrated marketing Communications. It indicates some very important issues around nowadays marketing, for example setting measurable objectives and allocating a marketing budget. These are very important steps towards calculating the ROI of marketing and to improve marketing activities in the long term. The concept of DAGMAR was new to me but I totally agree with the importance of measureable goals. By this the article is a good start to get an idea what integrated marketing is about.

This article can is related to the meanings and definitions of Integrated Marketing Communications. To establish a company you should establish good marketing. Without successful marketing many businesses do not succeed. This article looks at the five C's. These five C's act as a basic guideline as to how marketing can create a good brand or create a brand in general. The five C's which are being discussed in this article are Communication, confidence, connection, commitment and consistency. There are several different definitions for IMC, and this article fits into each one of the IMC definitions. This is a very useful article for looking at the basics of IMC, and creating a brand.

Nice. I like that the article tells you the steps that companies need to take in order to have successful branding. The 5 C's are really useful to and as Nandy has said it does help to understand what is needed in IMC to achieve successful branding.

Matthias Röse's comment,August 22, 2013 5:10 PM

I like the 5C and am very sure they are driving forces in the branding process. Especially the “key takeaways” are a very helpful, short summary of what the C is about and why it should be important to a brand. Especially Consistency is a very important factor that drives companies to integrate their marketing business process so that they make sure all marketing campaigns and activities convey the same message. But as the author says there are goals that are to be achieved first like getting in contact with your target audience before you can even think of conveying a special image.

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